nipner:It's just sad that now kids can't be kids anymore. I'm in my mid thirties, and would now end up in Guantanamo for some of the stupid crap I did. Soda bottle bombs, egging cars, toilet papering houses, stealing signs.....

/nothing with permanent damage//harmless clean fun and foolery

Quantum Apostrophe:Are Americans typically so afraid of everything that a vinegar and baking soda volcano will make them wet their pants?

I know we're on Fark, where we're not really interested in facts, just dogpiling on the latest Internet cause célèbre of the day, but let's be clear here.

This was not "harmless clean fun" with no permanent damage. It was most definitely not a vinegar and baking soda volcano.

This was drain cleaner and aluminum in a sealed container, something widely described on the YouTube videos she copied it from as a "bomb", and something which has the potential for causing a significant injury not just to herself, but to anybody else nearby.

A suspension was unquestionably called for. More wasn't, unless they have incontrovertible proof she actually intended harm to somebody.

gweilo8888:nipner: I never said that she shouldn't have been suspended for a few days... My point is that kids now are going to JAIL ferchristssake.... They are getting permanent arrest records now, for stuff that used to be handled by schools/parents. It's ridiculous. "Back in my day" the cops or other parents who caught us would call our parents and take us home, or schools would punish you with suspension/detention. This girl does not need to be in alternative school and a scared-straight program for one farking mistake.

/hate that you make me sound old...

You equated the "harmless fun" of your youth with the dangerous shiat she pulled. Either you were intentionally trolling, you were way off base with your assessment of what she did, or your "harmless fun" wasn't actually harmless. Your pick.

No, the difference is the permanent arrest record. We can go around and around all day about whether this girl's soda-bottle bomb was or was not any different from our homemade napalm; but what makes it very different today is that if/when we got in trouble 40 years ago, even if we got expelled or arrested, it did not ruin our entire lives. Assuming there was no malicious intent, we got to acknowledge our rank stupidity and carry on with our life.

Nowadays, your arrest record is not only permanent, it can destroy your life EVEN IF there is no malice, and even if nobody was hurt, and even if everyone involved agrees they initially overreacted. A felony arrest can prevent you from getting financial aid for college, or even being accepted into college; it can prevent you from being hired for many types of jobs, especially if it involves money or security; it can permanently impact your credit rating and make it difficult to rent a house, buy a car, qualify for a bank loan, etc. That is pretty heavy baggage for an honors student who did something silly because she was a kid and didn't realize what would happen.

Now, there are people who will say "Well, she should have thought about that before she mixed aluminum perchlorate and gasoline," but most people don't think about things when they are 16, and the ones who say they did are lying. And the adults who pretend they stop to carefully weigh each and every decision before they do something often don't realize the impact a simple arrest could have on their future--so why would a kid? So the idiot adults at this girl's school who had her arrested for her science experiment probably didn't realize what they were doing with their zero tolerance policies; but their (and your) brainless rationalizations of "But someone COULD HAVE been hurt" merely show that they didn't realize the potential ramifications.

There's a time and place for "could have been" in assessing penalties--but "attempt" crimes require an element of malice. Punishing a kid criminally for what would otherwise be negligence is, well, a crime.

MelGoesOnTour:You know why this is being handled with kid gloves? It's because the gal is black. But having said that, ANY kid who brings "an experiment" like this to school grounds is just looking for trouble. She clearly knew that some sort of exothermic reaction would be the likely outcome rather than, say, it resulting in a pretty rainbow of sweet tasting bubble froth. Sheesh--gimme a break! 10-2-1 this gal has had problems in the past which her parents will never acknowledge being how she's a perfect angel. 20-2-1 she'll be popping out a little Sh'n'ai'ia in the next couple of years.

And they say black people pull out the race card for no particular reason. Did you even read the farking article? She's a damn honor student who by all means is an exemplary student and role model according to the principal. But don't let that stop you from pegging all black people into the same ghetto hole.

Wasn't ever sure I believed her story, but frankly it was incredibly stupid to even think about arresting her. At most it should have been an in school punishment. Didn't even merit a suspension imo. It's a farking mixture of household chemicals and aluminum foil.

Popcorn Johnny:By the way, she wasn't going to jail for anything. The police arrested her on a charge based on her actions, which is what they do. Once the evidence was reviewed, the prosecutor declined in pressing charges. Stop acting like the internet saved her from prison.

By the way, she wasn't going to jail for anything. The police arrested her on a charge based on her actions, which is what they do. Once the evidence was reviewed, the prosecutor declined in pressing charges. Stop acting like the internet saved her from prison.

If she wasn't a minority, I guarantee the the internet (and Farkers) reaction would have been more along the lines of "stupid farking idiot knew what they were doing and deserve whatever they get". The people who claim that everybody else is racist are usually the most racist of them all.

MelGoesOnTour:You know why this is being handled with kid gloves? It's because the gal is black. But having said that, ANY kid who brings "an experiment" like this to school grounds is just looking for trouble. She clearly knew that some sort of exothermic reaction would be the likely outcome rather than, say, it resulting in a pretty rainbow of sweet tasting bubble froth. Sheesh--gimme a break! 10-2-1 this gal has had problems in the past which her parents will never acknowledge being how she's a perfect angel. 20-2-1 she'll be popping out a little Sh'n'ai'ia in the next couple of years.

No, she was arrested because she was black. This is Florida, where the Civil Rights Movement was something that happened in other states. Every report has called her an honour student, which means she has a real shot at avoiding the Sh'n'ai'ia fate. At least, she did until she got arrested for something a white kid wouldn't have been, since Floridians seem incapable of treating black people like people.

Quantum Apostrophe:Are Americans typically so afraid of everything that a vinegar and baking soda volcano will make them wet their pants?

Yes.

The Republican ladies where my wife works were talking about the need for strong anti pressure cooker legislation. She told them she'd gone to a yard sale the other day, and saw a couple of old men buying two pressure cookers. Their reaction "OMG. What did they look like?"

She was tempted to go all Mooslim on their sorry asses, but... office politics.

Actually you can blow stuff up real good with some pretty mundane chemistry.

What this incident weighs on is (AFAIK) that she was using a small plastic bottle, which doesn't have the size or pressure tolerances of something malicious. It sounds like she made a bleach bomb, which builds up pressurized hydrogen gas. Using a stronger container would make this mundane reaction very destructive.

shiat, you don't even need to blow people up to kill them dead by mixing household chemicals. You can make damn deadly gas by mixing bleach and ammonia.

I'm sure people would be completely defending her if she had inadvertently released chlorine gas in the hallways because she wanted to see what would happen. Mixing drain cleaner and aluminum foil isn't much better.

Her "science project" was something she'd never done before and only saw on youtube and was performed near a bunch of even less informed people. That alone makes it worth punishing.

BUT, it wasn't some benign reaction, one of the key ingredients was drain cleaner. Anyone want to guess what would have happened if the reaction products had gotten on someone's skin or in their eyes.

One of the first things I learned to do when trying experiments like this was to be as far away from people as I could be AFTER at least doing basic research about the chemicals involved. At a minimum, reading the label would have clued her into possible bad things that might happen.

Hey, I'm working with something that alone can cause blindness and serious chemical burns, I should be careful. Since I'm using this product in reaction, I should be double careful in case something even worse is possible.

What the hell kind of science student does shiat like this, in places like this?

I honestly understand your garage, backyard, secluded section of the park, the desert, the everglades, etc.. But I don't understand at school with people all around.

From other stories I read, she saw how to make this bomb (and it's called a bomb) on the internet, and decided to make and set it off before school, on school grounds. She knew what she was doing, and had a pretty good idea of what would most likely happen when that went off. Did she deserve to be arrested? Fark no. Some time in detention/suspension? Yeah, most likely. If a piece of shrapnel from that bottle had taken out one of her friend's eyes, or even one of hers, that school would have been sued into oblivion, probably by her parents for not supervising her well enough.

It's not worth farking her entire life over, but it deserved some sort of punishment.

Quantum Apostrophe:Are Americans typically so afraid of everything that a vinegar and baking soda volcano will make them wet their pants?

No, but lawyers are so present in America you have to crucify anyone who has any fun or you will become legally liable for millions of dollars in damages when buthurt fark-faces sue over non-issues. See: Any Lawsuit Since 1995.